Damnation: The Cynos Project

And unusually, to the benefit of beautifully manicured fingernails! In referrence to the wiring loom ofcourse, it of loose morals, all stripped and baring itself to me, disgusting heathen!





Erm, yeah. If you hadn't guessed, I have been rather all consumed by the particularly odious task of stripping down the wiiring loom...on my lonesome, something which I wouldn't wish on my greatest of enemies (I'm looking at you, common Moth!), it really is tedious, annoying and testing. And that's before so much as actually attempting a plan of action to removing wires.

So, it all initiated with the plan to remove the apparently - to me at least - idiot-proof ABS wiring route, as with no pump and the rear sensors removed, it would, or should prove straightforward. Right, down to it, this wiring should be covered with no more than some sheathing and electrical tape. Hours later, I managed to pull through one of 3 looms from the ABS pump, after removing a metric ton of sheathing, electrical tape, more sheathing, more tape, some hard plastic coverings, electric tape, plaster of paris, sheathing, papyrus, and some more electric tape. It really is a haphazard sandwiching of all sorts of adhevsive and covering mediums. Another annoying discovery, was that a lot of wires (predominantly grounding wires) seemed to tee off and disperse themselves to all corners of the known universe. This really hampered the desired swift progress of just chopping, cutting, and forgetting wiring, as everything needed to be tracked to the source then its purpose/fitness of removal to be decided.



And then I moved to the inside. This is a nightmare of fuseboxes, fuse blocks, and just general chaotic wiring confusion. Which pwnt me. Believing I had tracked back and severed the required wires to remove one of the ABS ECU loom plugs, I chopped a bundle of wires, and just to ensure I as removing the right plug, offered it to the ABS ECU - in retrospect, I knew immediately I had cut off the wrong plug. Uh-oh. This wasn't meant to be removed. SPLENDID! Seems like I cut off a miscellaneous loom leading out of the main fusebox. Diddums. Oh well, I soldiered on! Quite literally - by the end of the day, I had JUST managed to remove all constituents of the ABS system circuitry, as I needed to disassemble not only all the engine-bay looming, but also the rear looming to remove the rear ABS Sensor wiring. Arrgh! However, this was no time to let the veins of stress crack through and resort to violent measures - the fact the car rocked slighlty when sitting inside and pulling the loom off of the loom fix-downs was slightly unnerving! In my first days mission I had also managed to sever the grounding wiring for the bootlid loom, as I was confounded by the tees yet again. To my horror, a week or so later when I had progressed to the main engine loom, I found this:



Bah Humbug!!!

Whilst I was in the interior of the car, and to ease the pain of being completely flummoxed by the amount of wiring to go through, and complete and utter lack of will to go through it - compounded with the total lack of knowing what I was doing - I decided to re-attack the weight saving measures and tidy up some unwanted clips and plugs and whatnot. The resultant removal of various forest gremlins, plugs, fairies, clips and what have you, amounted to a massive saving of.

Wait for it

















144.1g

Holy Engineering Ingenuity Batman! Yeah, I thought I was pretty sad, as you'll read in a newer post, the newer weight savings measures amount to little in isolation, however, I read a tidbit that made me slightly less clinically insane - McLaren had their logo engraved into the aluminium dashboard crossbeam in order to save 2.6g. Thank you, and, kindly sit on that naysayers. To further add to that, a few days later I set forth to also weigh the gearbox and driveshaft assemblies, mostly out of boredom, some out of curiosity, and some more to acknowleedge that these measures will amount to incredibly not-so-substantial savings! In short, the new (C56) gearbox & driveshaft assembly weighs 300g LESS than the old (C52b) assembly, score!

Anyway, I then returned to the wiring, and on returning to it, I was still flummoxed, so decided to twiddle my thumbs elsewhere. So. I removed the engine mounts, which took no effort whatsoever as they're held in by measly bolts (apart from the rear gearbox mount, they're a pig and necessitated the loosening of the anti-roll bar). In doing so I also noticed just how worn they were, opposing little resistance even to my Herculean thumbs, yet alone a porky lump of up and downy bang bangy metal (to quote a friend). Prior to this I also noticed this:



The passenger-side disc was quite worn - how worn? Very worn! Infact, it was so worn - I was going to attempt to be funny and put a "Yo mama!" joke here but I can't think of anything that would go with a worn brake disc. Onward. - that the outer grooves are nearly non-existant! I believe (a-duh!) that this may be the side that had the previously sticking caliper! Also this leads me to think, could it be a reason for the lack of brake torque? Unlikely thought I, as it was so sudden and occured straight after receiving the car from the garage.

Fast-forward a week or so, and in a move that had everyone believing I was somehow possessed by some evil doer, I decided to clean the enginebay. Heresy! So, yes, with the cleaning demon within my essence, I set forth to water-proof some vitals in the engine bay - in this case meaning I cut off some plastic from a plastic bag and cellotaped it around the fuel filter, some wiring, holes in the firewall etc.



And then came the jet wash. I got a fair cleaning from it, but on drying, I was astonished.



It had next to NO effect whatsoever! Bah! This means I need to expend actual physical effort, to hell with that! Obviously my possessor is very lazy. I will leave that to another day then. Le Mans mud staining, thou hath defeated me. And completely soaked the garage floor. Fabulous!

Fast forwarding again, I managed to find a lower cambelt cover which meant I could finally get the crankshaft pulley in position and thus get the car ready for the installation of the flywheel! After which I was really struggling to think of anything worthwhile to do so I set back down to attacking the wiring.



In short, lots and lots and lots of wires were removed, completely unsure of whether I was wise to remove that wire, wondering why are so many removed wires leading into the ECU, and will my car ever start ever again? These questions and more will undoubtedly give me a hilarious kick in the teeth in the near future. The box of wiring and related removed items, is pretty substantial at this stage, which just serves to build up the anxiety - not to worry, when Mark shows up he can fix it all for me cause I love him and because he has to or I'll cry :-(

Sometimes I just wish that my thumbs weren't so idle and vulnerable to Devil's play.